North Ridge

Shirley liebacking the finger crack near top of the lower pitch of The Great Gendarme (5.9) on North Ridge of Mount Stuart. This is pitch 12 according to Nelson and Potterfield guidebook. To the untrained eye Shirley's expression could be mistakened for a smile while in fact she was instructing me to put the camera away and concentrate on the [fu*king] belaying! 11:30 am on July 30, 2005.

Approach from camp at Ingalls Lk. took about 3.5 hours (leisurely). Glacier crossing + 4th class gully was about 1.5 hours. Roped climbing from start of upper ridge to summit took us 6.5 hours (20-30 minutes were spent trying to clean a cam that's walked in :) Descent (the crux of the day IMHO...ankle twisting scree, very loose stuff) back to camp was about 5 hours. All in all, got up at 1:30am and were back in the tent by 7pm.